Drilling down into the simplicity of WordPress

Over the years, web users of all skill levels have embraced the WordPress platform for its simple user interface, clean aesthetic and customizable design options. The simplicity of WordPress was especially attractive to less-experienced users in its early days. WordPress’s creators set out to democratize publishing by equipping its users with intuitive tools and attractive templates that would permit even the novice blogger to set up and maintain a beautiful website.

WordPress’s creators set out to democratize publishing.

What began as a blogging platform has evolved over the last decade into a powerful instrument for building a much more complex website.

Evolution of a CMS

The open source nature of WordPress makes it like a house constantly under construction, with additional core capabilities and more and more plugins and themes continually being added. (At the present moment, WordPress has more than 40,000 plugins and 10,000 themes.) Approximately quarter of the top 10 million websites are run on WordPress, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses operate their ecommerce stores on the platform.

As WordPress has mushroomed into the world’s largest CMS, it has outgrown its initial role as a simple blogging platform. The thousands of plugins and themes created by developers have given it added functionality to enable its role as a wildly successful website builder for small businesses in need of a solid web presence.

However, the endless options for first-time users choosing a theme and template can be intimidating. The platform once praised for its simplicity has moved in a more complicated direction — while the small business community’s need for an all-in-one, pared back website solution also has grown.

Getting started with WordPress

With this in mind, we at GoDaddy took a step back and asked ourselves what a first-time WordPress user would want, need and expect from their initial interactions with the WordPress platform.

It’s worth mentioning here just how dramatically things have changed since the WordPress project started over a decade ago. These days, there are a variety of site builder systems with pared-down features. These solutions are even less sophisticated than WordPress’s initial offerings, which was easy, free and flexible.

WordPress was a game changer because it was easy, free and flexible.

As the industry has evolved, how can WordPress rise to the challenge of current times and maintain a fluid, easy setup for its users? As resounding supporters of the WordPress community, we at GoDaddy decided to develop a solution.

WP Easy Mode

When a first-time user sets up their site, it might not be clear how to filter through the incredible number of WordPress options that are available, and that’s where the experts come in. We started at the beginning and discussed internally what’s imperative to a novice user’s setup process, and boiled it down to the basics: content and visual capabilities with access to detailed functionality and expedited setup.

And we call it WP Easy Mode.

Because that’s exactly what it is. How does it work? It starts at the beginning to configure a fast, easy approach to WordPress, changing the dashboard from basic Hello World blog to a set of options that is just as easy to use, but is configured for a small business site or online store.

This super-simple quick start takes WordPress back to basics with simplicity — coupled with a variety of options expected by its user base in 2016. This is our first iteration, and there’s more to come.

At the end of the day, WordPress is a major force on the web. It has forever altered the landscape of website publishing and democratized the ability for small businesses to get online. We have deep admiration for the WordPress community and a great deal of respect for our small business customers — so we created WP Easy Mode as a means for these two worlds to meet and make the most of each other.

As the WordPress community continues to expand, we will continue to develop new to enable small business to get the most out of this amazing platform. We’re always keen to hear from our customers, so please leave comments below if you have an experience you’d like to share.

A veteran of both startups and the enterprise, Chris has a deep track record in developing customer community and evangelist programs for brands such as Adobe, H&R Block and Aruba Networks while holding executive positions at Ant’s Eye View and Edelman Digital, and he was co-founder and CEO at Cerado.
He currently lives in the Bay Area with his family.